Has the computer changed the way you write?

I used to write in discrete "drafts", which were a retyping of the entire work. Now I work in this very amorphous way within Word, where I'm constantly revising and never really know which draft I'm in. I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow I keep myself sane.

Is Fortress Of Solitude the result of endless hours at the computer?

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world. I have one of those "tangerine flying saucer" iBooks but I'm about to upgrade to a G4.

Do you Wi-Fi?

I can't risk it. Part of the point of writing in cafes is so that it is impossible to get online. The net has way too many distractions when I need to work.

Data loss?

I once lost the first 10 pages of a short story. It was so traumatic that I've been an obsessive backer-up since. It cost me about a week of misery because I couldn't believe I'd lost the data. Then I sat down in one determined session and rewrote the 10 pages. I got about 95% of the original back from memory. I now back everything up on Zip disks, though.

Website?

I have a dedicated fansite at www.sinc.sunysb.edu/Stu/dmyers, which does a pretty good job of tracking my movements. It has inspired me to be very lazy about creating my own site. As I'm not responsible directly for the content, then it can be in error and I don't really care. If it were my own site I'd have to be obsessive about it.

Blogging?

I've never been a diarist. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and want things to come out finished and authoritative. But I've written for a couple of websites such as Salon.

You read blogs though?

There are a few good ones that I glance at when I surf. I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture. Ray Davis in California has a lovely eccentric site at www.bellonatimes.com. I like it partly because it's not updated daily so it's not just the unending rantings of someone who can't shut up ... he adds to it more selectively.

So you think some blogs give you too much information?

I think that's a problem with the web in general. Unselectivity is the achilles heel but it just means you have to become an editor.

Is the net the world's biggest library or the world's biggest sex shop?

I see it as almost like a Jorge Luis Borges story ... the endless library of Babel! I like the way the net has this funny tendency to devolve into very traditional epistolary form and it brings up these issues of etiquette. For all its revolutionary potential, I love that homely face it sometimes shows when it turns into an 18th-century epistolary novel.

Spam?

I outsmarted the spammers by changing my email address to something really long and strange and I never use that address to sign up for anything. My old email is deluged but I'm feeling smug about this new, clean one.

Jonathan Lethem's bookmarks

www.amazon.com
For the book commentaries

www.salon.com
Because I spend so much time writing on my computer, I am always looking for ways to curtail my screen time

Visit: www.faber.co.uk